goon wrote:
Hope for Xhaka.
Let’s talk about the defensive midfielder, an essential element to a team. Why has this position been a weak spot for PSG this season? You have tried playing with Motta, Lo Celso, Rabiot, Verratti, Lassana Diarra…
It depends… I remember when I would analyse Real Madrid, I thought that Xabi Alonso suffered from not having to run track back and that he was the weak link. When I would analysed Barcelona and saw Busquets, I thought that Sergio suffered from the space left behind him. I thought the same with Thiago Motta. All the great defensive midfielders suffer from a lack of space behind them, and when they are required to track back. But when a team has the ball 70% of the time, that is more important than knowing if you’ll struggle when tracking back. You are the one dominating the matches. That’s why your defensive midfielder’s output during moments where you don’t have the ball is less important.
Because those periods don’t last as long. If I were to put a destroyer at defensive midfielder, there’s a significant trade off between what I can do during build-up play, rather than what I can do in defensive situations. Of course, Thiago Motta needs to better without the ball. But if you analyse Xabi Alonso or Sergio Busquets, the same could be said for them. They struggle during those periods, but they contribute so much more while on the ball. I don’t think this position was a weakness for PSG.
Motta is an incredible defensive midfielder. His injuries were the problem this year. Motta brought a lot to the team and his contribution on the ball was significant. He had difficult tracking back? Fine, but so do two other European champions Xabi and Busquets, who possess the same characteristics as Thiago. I don’t think PSG’s problem was the defensive midfielder.
Essentially these are the same reasons given by AW as to why he has not played a genuine defensive role on midfield, and why he has sold any player who can only offer that sort of capability as a ball winner, and little ability to add to our play when we are in possession.
The 'issue' is that our midfield has usually lacked the proper balance and/or discipline when the selection is based upon 2 CMs.
The biggest difference I can see is that Emery looks at the CAM role as being part of a pyramid midfield 3, whilst AW pushed Ozil even higher when playing with Giroud as CF.
Their reasoning is very similar and perhaps the closest comparison is AW's hybrid 4213 were Fabregas played ahead of 2 CMs as seen A v Everton in the opening game to the season way back when.
Interesting that Emery seems to concentrate on trying to replicate in game scenarios so that the players will know how to react both with and without the ball. It's not the same as positional based play and nor is it strictly intuitive, but it's has elements of both.
Perhaps Emery's biggest contribution to player's training may be adding the element of comprehending WHY they are expected to respond to the scenarios, rather than basing their responses upon intuition.
